let me ask you something.
If someone records a podcast episode on their phone and then someone else spends
years technique, out acoustic control,
sound
design.
General production and publication, should they sound the same?
Do they have a right to, is
that fair?
Because
that's the direction we're heading in.
Let me take a moment to let you know about this voice region.
you heard the clip That was the demo video from this new tool from Waves Audio.
Now, waves have got a lot of respect for Waves.
They've been in the audio software game for many years and I know about
them because they do a plugin for Adobe Audition, which I've used for many years,
along with Isotope RX tools as well.
They're kind of competitors in the space.
And the idea behind these tools is that you put terrible audio into them
and then they clean it up, and some do it better than others, but generally
speaking, waves is one of the good ones.
So the idea is record your content, click one button, upload your audio.
Echo gone.
Background noise.
Gone.
Studio quality sound comes in.
The idea being that if you are either strapped for cash or you don't
want to invest in decent equipment, you can record stuff on your phone
or on your laptop, Mike, and it sounds like you're in the studio,
I've got mixed feelings about this.
On one hand for the listener experience, it's great.
It's raising standards even when people don't really wanna put any
effort in to raising standards.
On the other
hand,
that it's raising standards, even when people don't wanna put the effort in
to raise standards, and it's lowering the cost of entry to sound incompetent.
So
it seems to me like we're not rewarding the craft anymore.
We're not rewarding the effort.
We're not rewarding the learning, the development, the mastery.
We're rewarding someone having access to a credit
card.
Now,
look, don't get me
wrong, there is something quite heartwarming and noble about
lowering barriers to entry.
I'm
a gatekeeper.
I don't wanna be
a gatekeeper.
The only thing I gatekeeper around is people that come in from a
completely unrelated space, like
hr.
or accounting.
And business dries up and they think, oh, I've listened to a podcast words,
I'm gonna become a podcast consultant.
And that happens far more often than you might think.
That's where I do tend to be a gatekeeper, because it's people's
money and livelihoods at risk.
I'm
not a gatekeeper
against one person being allowed to enter the podcasting space over another.
That's not fair.
Everyone's entitled to try something.
So there is something really good about lowering those barriers.
But there's something dangerous about pretending the effort
doesn't
matter.
And that's essentially what we're saying here.
you got the
serious Who
spent
three to 500 quid
on a mic.
They've invested in treating their room acoustic treatments so it sounds decent,
and they've spent time learning sound, how to edit what sounds good in the mix.
you've got the lazy influencer their iPhone stands in the kitchen.
kitchen.
Does zero prep.
Doesn't need to learn editing,
doesn't
need to bother learning sound design, and yet their content pops.
So the question I would ask is this,
If
both outputs are valid and.
seemingly functionally identical,
What behavior are we incentivizing here?
Because
the markets tend to
reward
what's cheapest at scale.
the thing
that I think a lot of people are gonna be overlooking with
this
story.
many other stories like it.
when a new exciting tool goes to market and allows everyone to sound
like they've recorded in the studio, even if they actually recorded with
a sock wrapped around their iPhone.
Tools like this are not simply cleaning up
audio.
That's the surface
level thing they do.
What tools like this are doing is they're creating a house sound.
What I mean by that is you go to a supermarket and you get
the house
wine, as
in.
the wine that you will see in wine racks up and down the country
versus.
The wine.
Wine that someone is proud to display might have cost them a lot more.
Maybe they've had to research it.
They've got knowledge of wine, so their
bottle
out in the rack of house wines, and that's what's happening with podcasting
At the moment, really
good.
Podcasts do stand out still.
what they sound like, they stand out.
You can tell the difference in recording quality editing, quality
production, quality, just the general production standards that the
publishers have had behind the project.
But we're creeping away from that, and once platforms start to expect that sound.
That becomes the standard and the norm.
anything
outside of that is going to feel wrong, the wall.
So other content won't be
banned.
It'll just be discouraged, ignored, mocked.
And that's how a medium stops evolving, not through rules, but through defaults.
judge in the independent podcast awards, and every year I attend that event
and we reward independent creators
who may not have the best
sounding podcasts.
but the
creativity and their vision carries them towards an award.
But what's gonna happen if people who are spending their time
out
the creativity and the content side of things, but aren't
necessarily that invested in.
Dampening their audio with a one click fix is all
tool.
Are we now going to
punish them because their podcast
sounds a little bit different?
It sounds a little bit more, I don't know, rustic than the studio quality
podcasts that are flooding the platforms.
Now look, let me be completely transparent.
As someone
that
invests time and money into creating high quality sounding studio level podcasts.
Yeah, there's an element of, oh,
I'm
not
sure I want Pretenders
to the throne coming in
and doing what I do in a fraction of the time at a commoditized cost.
Of course, there's an element of that, but there's also an element of the art.
getting
lost.
For example,
in podcast episodes, I don't just one click fix all the audio.
Some of the audio I leave to breathe let it sound as it was
recorded, and that makes it stand
out.
But where
we those moments won't stand out anymore.
So here's the question that I can't shake.
If technology is allowed to erase
the difference between
effort and laziness, what exactly are we telling creators now and
how long until our listeners can't tell the difference either?
either?
I've been the lio, the podcast master,
and I'd like to thank you for taking the time to listen to my
thoughts on this particular topic on the show, podcasting Insights.
if you think somebody else might find this episode useful or interesting,
please do share it with them.
And if you haven't yet, please do follow the podcast in your favorite podcast app.
in the meantime, good luck with your ongoing journey towards
attaining Pod Master three.